Ring the bells!!

​It is four o’clock in morning.

Everyone is very happy. Their brand-new daughter is snuggled on her mother’s chest, naked and pink. Baby girl can stay there for as long as everyone wants. Dad is really getting sleepy, mum is wired and wide awake. Big brother, who was much harder to get to sleep tonight, slept through all the noise of the birth and the cleaning up clatter; he has just woken up to meet his new sister. He can snuggle in too.

The midwives are leaving. Sam said to me after the last birth that this was the best bit, when we leave the house and softly close the door behind us. Quietly we walk out, arm in arm and hug each other with tears of joy in our eyes. Ring the bells. Sing out the news. Let the whole town know. Tonight a woman has given birth in this home. Another ordinary miracle has happened. A new baby is born.

But no, its four o’clock in the morning, everyone else in town is tucked up asleep in their beds, so we slip off into the night.